How to use a Chord progression to support a melody?

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to share with you all how to use a chord progression to support a melody.

Let’s get into it. 

So what is a chord progression?

A chord progression is a series of chords played in an interesting rhythm. 

A chord is basically three or more notes played at the same time. 

So basically it’s playing multiple notes at the same time in a series in order to create a harmonic element to a song. 

And what it does is it supports the melody and gives direction in the song as to where to go. 

I mean don’t get me wrong if you do a good job at the melody, then you will actually hear the chord changes in your melody. 

But I digress, Chord changes can actually provide harmony and dissonance. 

Dissonance is contrast. 

And contrast can actually have a positive effect on the mood of your song. 

The more contrast, the more emotion. 

So basically you would use the chords to create harmony and also contrast so that your song can rise and fall and actually have mood. 

It needs a mixture of both happy and sad notes in order to actually sound good. 

And yeah that’s basically how you use a chord progression in order to support the melody. 

Now a word about rhythm 

So what happens is that you could actually have a really simple rhythm being played in the chords, which is true for a lot of pop and rock music. 

But if you were to make the rhythm in the melody interesting and rhythmically diverse, then it would actually sound really cool. 

But the same is true vice versa. 

If you make a really complex rhythm in the chords, then you could actually make a simple rhythm for the vocals and it would actually sound good as well. 

It’s actually a balance to be honest with you. 

It’s a balance of complex and simplicity. 

Also when making chord progressions you should know a few things about the chord progression 

How to form a chord progression 

The chord progression can be any series of chords, but usually fall into a few simple pop chord progressions. 

You could actually look up what are the most common pop chord progressions and just copy them, since it’s impossible to copy a chord progression you could actually use it in your songs. 

So after you pick one, you need to know this about rhythm in a chord progression as well, it needs to be repetitive and it needs to change. 

So in a guitar chord progression it changes with the chords and is repetitive in the rhythm. 

So just imagine Wonderwall by Oasis as the prime example of this example. 

It literally just uses the same 4 chords for the entire verses and keeps the same rhythm all throughout it as well. 

If you don’t know what rhythm is it’s basically when to play the notes. 

So if you have a couple of 16th note strum patterns then that’s telling you when to play the notes and that’s rhythm. 

If it says play nothing but 8th notes, then that’s the rhythm right there.

That’s usually how you do it. 

And when you make the melody, try and make it an independent yet familiar to the chord progression. 

So when making a melody, you should aim to play some of your melodic notes on the chord progression and some off. 

But it should not be that every time you play a chord, you also sing a note. 

That makes for a very dull and very amateurish song. 

Try and use the chords for support but not the entire song. 

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Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!